9 reasons why you're failing at being a good person

I think we all know about the list of things you need to be in order to qualify as a Good Person. Even so I’m more aware of what’s on this list every day. Because, unless I’m mistaken, being Good has become obligatory, and because I can’t tick a single one of the boxes. Starting with:

1. Owning a dog.

I’m as keen as the next person on dogs. I have in the past owned dogs, just not since it became the number one sign of a well-adjusted human being. I would, as it happens, quite like a dog, but since there is now something distinctly Red Queeny about being dogless 'when you live so near the park’ and 'work from home’ and 'all the children would Love it’ and 'it’s amazing exercise; you’d drop a dress size’ I feel disinclined to fall into line. Dog validation is out of control.

2. Having a fitness regime.

As in 'classes’ with a 'teacher’ or, at the very least, running wearing cat burglar athleisurewear and hand weights. Walking the dog doesn’t cut it any more. And if you’re not even walking the dog…that’s a bit like glugging from a litre bottle of vodka at work. Good People take care of themselves.

3. Being a decent gardener.

The minimum gardening skills you require to be a Good Person (and this has been the case for a while) is the ability to grow herbs, and identify all the plants in your own garden. When well meaning enthusiasts look out of the window and remark on your pelargoniums, it is no longer acceptable to shrug, or peer past them and say 'Oh That… I think it just grows’. Inadequacy in this area equals the opposite of nurturing, serene, aware. It’s being the human equivalent of a tin of Red Bull.

Gardening is seen as sign you are a 'good' personCredit:
Geoff Pugh/TMG

4. Having clothes your daughter wants to borrow.

This is the measure of a Good female parent, and if she isn’t at least stealing your cashmere, you need to ask yourself where you’ve gone wrong. Usually my step-daughter starts chewing her lip when I present her with something she is GOING TO LOVE ('It’s Voyage!’) and then I find it cut up and being used as a screen polisher.

5. Making interesting Saturday plans.

Cycling to the local fete; a wild water swim and a picnic; the exhibition followed by the film. Or, alternatively, drifiting aimlessly while carrying heavy shopping, in unsuitable footwear. Goodness is wanting a full, rich life, and then having the skills to achieve it.

woman cycling in the woods

6. Having a Girl gang.

As in girlfriends who love bomb you on birthdays, get together for spa breaks, and clink champagne flutes over brunch, for which you’ve all got spruced up in white jeans and skinny tops. (I don’t personally want this – lucky for you girlfriends – but nonetheless this is proof of Goodness. Yours and theirs).

7. Being an effortless cook (and) moving with the culinary times.

Or, still failing to remember when the lamb went in, and never having cooked anything involving harissa, sumac or quinoa. You can be Good and a bad cook, but being stuck in the creamy, cheesy, crumble era is a bit like being anti-gay in 2016.

Facials are the ultimate grooming essential Credit:
Rex Features/Rex Features

8. Having a hobby.

Maybe a bit of light sculpting? Singing in a choir? Book group, at the very least. I have no hobby. When many women I know are knocking off a watercolour, or making jam out of their own raspberries, I am to be found standing on a chair in the kitchen wondering what to do with all the kilner jars and Gu ramekins that I have saved for some as yet unknown purpose.

9. Not letting yourself go.

Or what we now call 'grooming’. Being Good means getting your roots done just before you need to, and not giving up waxing in months with an R. Apparently.